Afghanistan More Deadly for Women and Children, U.N. Says

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Evacuating the wounded after a truck bombing in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in May. The city had the most civilian casualties in the country in the first half of 2017 because of a few huge bombings.CreditAndrew Quilty for The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan has grown more deadly this year for women, children and other residents of the capital, the United Nations mission in the country said on Monday, even as the violence is expected to intensify in the coming months with no hope of peace talks any time soon.

“The human cost of this ugly war in Afghanistan — loss of life, destruction and immense suffering — is far too high,” said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the United Nations secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan. He cited the threat posed by homemade bombs or improvised explosive devices, I.E.D.s, used by insurgent groups. “The continued use of indiscriminate, disproportionate and illegal I.E.D. devices by antigovernment elements is particularly appalling and must immediately stop,” he said.

There was a 23 percent rise in the number of women killed.

The leading causes of casualties among women were attacks, including suicide bombings, in highly populated civilian areas like Kabul, the capital. These assaults accounted for almost three-quarters of the 174 women killed and 462 injured in the first half of the year.

As more women have joined the work force in Afghanistan, they have become more vulnerable to insurgents targeting government workers during rush hours in crowded parts of the capital, the U.N. report said. Another reason for the increase in women killed or injured in attacks has been the growing intensity of urban assaults.

A huge truck bomb detonated at a crowded traffic circle in Kabul in May was one of the deadliest strikes in the long Afghan war, and a reminder of how the battlefield has extended to the capital. That attack killed around 80 people, and though many of the people killed and injured were commuters on the streets, many other casualties were in office buildings close to the blast site. (Three women were killed in the bombing and another 52 injured.)

Children were again killed in large numbers.

They made up more than a quarter of the total casualties, and child deaths were up 9 percent compared with the same period last year.

“These civilian attacks need to stop,” said David Skinner, the country director for the nongovernmental organization Save the Children. “Not only do they injure and kill innocent people in the most horrific way, but they cause untold distress and trauma, especially for children, often leading to serious psychosocial issues and impacting their longer-term development.”

The report blamed antigovernment forces for 67 percent of the civilian casualties, holding the Taliban responsible for 43 percent, the Islamic State for 5 percent and unidentified groups for 19 percent. But Afghans also suffer at the hands of government and allied forces, sometimes as they come across their unexploded ordnance.

The use of homemade bombs has increased.

The report commended government forces for reducing civilian casualties from ground engagements, including indiscriminate firing of mortars and other heavy weapons in civilian areas. In the meantime, it said, casualties caused by the insurgents’ use of homemade bombs had only increased. Roughly 40 percent of all civilian casualties — 596 deaths and 1,483 injuries — resulted from the insurgents’ use of such explosives, including suicide bombs, the report said.

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Faiz Muhammad, 60, with his 14-year-old son, Qudratullah, at a hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Mr. Muhammad said the boy was wounded in an American military raid that killed eight members of his family.CreditTaimoor Shah/The New York Times

The Taliban rejected the report in a statement, calling it one-sided and politically motivated.

Homemade bombs continue to be one of the Taliban’s main weapons, one that was on display again this week as Afghan forces tried to recapture the district of Nawa in the southern province of Helmand.

As Afghan forces pushed toward the district center this week, they had to defuse as many as 100 Taliban bombs, said Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand.

Kabul, the capital, had the most casualties.

Even as violence has increased in 15 of the country’s 34 provinces, mass-casualty attacks in the capital have killed the most civilians, the U.N. report said.

A drastically different case of civilian casualties occurred over the weekend in Kabul, an increasingly militarized city where checkpoints and security barriers have been proliferating. Guards for a senior government official opened fire on a wedding convoy passing in front of his heavily fortified street, killing the bride and another woman.

The Kabul police said that members of the wedding convoy had fired celebratory shots into the air as they were passing the home of Hajji Mohammad Mohaqiq, deputy chief executive of the Afghan government, and that his guards had thought they were under attack. Two of the guards have been arrested, said a police spokesman, Abdul Basir Mujahid.

Afghans are also killed by government and allied forces.

A United States military raid last Thursday on the outskirts of Tarinkot city, the capital of Uruzgan Province in the south, resulted in civilian casualties, residents and officials said. Dust Muhammad Nayab, a spokesman for the governor of Uruzgan, said Taliban from all over had come to the rescue of the militants’ shadow governor, the target of the raid, so the fighting had become intense.

“Six civilians have been killed and 12 others injured, including women and children in the cross-fighting,” Mr. Nayab said.

Faiz Muhammad, 60, who lives on the outskirts of Tarinkot, said life had become difficult for his village even before the raid, with the Taliban warning people to leave before each offensive. He would take his family to the forested area of Sajawal, sometimes five times a month, and they would return after the fighting quieted down.

Last week, his family fled, but Mr. Muhammad stayed home to take care of the cattle. One night he heard planes, and the next morning he learned that a raid had taken place in Sajawal. Eight members of his family were killed, he said: his wife, Shapirai, 45; his son Abdul Khaliq, 28; a daughter-in-law; three other sons; and two young grandsons. Five other family members were wounded.

“My heart is just bleeding,” Mr. Muhammad said at the bedside of his 25-year-old son, Mujahid, in a hospital in nearby Kandahar. “The doctors say my son’s leg might need amputation. I am worried about his health — if they do amputate, he will be half a man.”

Capt. Bill Salvin of the United States Navy, a spokesman for the American military in Afghanistan, said the military had “looked at the tapes” and did not see evidence that civilians had been targeted. But he said a preliminary inquiry had been started, a routine response to any claim of civilian casualties.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Afghanistan Grows Deadlier for Civilians, United Nations Report Says. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe